Word: samper
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...that they have also begun to make deep inroads into the heroin market, previously dominated by Southeast Asian drug lords. Although Miguel remains at large, the Colombian government crowed over Gilberto's arrest. "This is the beginning of the end of the Cali cartel," announced President Ernesto Samper Pizano. A press conference at police headquarters in Bogota, where Rodriguez was paraded about like war booty, had the air of a New Year's Eve party, with confetti and streamers floating through the air. "Rodr?guez was arrested in his stronghold," says a pleased DEA official. "It shows that the Colombian...
...year, the Rodriguez brothers have been trying to cut a deal with the Colombian government in exchange for slap-on-the-wrist punishment. For just as long, impatient drug fighters in Washington have been pressing Bogota to make the narcobosses pay a stiff penalty for their crimes. When Ernesto Samper Pizano was elected President nearly five months ago, the Clinton Administration thought it had assurances that the Rodriguez brothers would not get the deal they wanted...
This week, two months after Quinn's luncheon interview, the Colombian government appears to be willing to reopen discussions of surrender. In a written statement to TIME, Samper said he had concluded that merely chasing after traffickers was not effective. "It is no good to have the cartel bosses in jail if they continue narcotrafficking," he wrote. "We know from experience that it is more important to dismantle the cartels than to incarcerate their leaders. Jailing them is necessary, but it is just not enough." An aide amplified that "the door is open on the surrender program again...
Such generalized responses immediately raised questions of exactly how onerous such a surrender might be. The drug lords were optimistic. Samper's statement, said a spokesman for Rodriguez, "is the answer we've been waiting for." U.S. officials, however, preferred to think otherwise. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gelbard said that Bogota had previously "told us their strong preference is to capture them rather than to go for the kind of surrender program the previous government was so enthusiastic about." If a deal was struck, he said, U.S. ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette "doesn't believe they will be lenient...
That and other cooperative efforts could be shut down again, however, if Washington proves the claim that Samper is in league with the dealers. "This guy has a long history of trafficking connections," says a senior policymaker, who suggests that while the tapes do not make for a "smoking gun," they provide "very compelling evidence" that Samper owes his victory to the narco-mafia...